The brainchild of Sean Corcoran and Matt Wolff from Time's Champion Productions, the shooting script for Pub was ultimately banged out by Sean and Half-a-Dozen Lemmings Productions' Jon Blum in the weeks leading up to the Gallifrey 2003 convention. Having finally arrived at a fourteen-page script mere days before the con, the cast and crew set out from all corners of the world for California.
The writers enlisted fan vid talents Steve Hill from the Federation (based in Chicago), Rupert Booth and Paul Ferry from Timebase Productions (somewhere in England), and fan Tom Kelly to portray other Doctors in the sketch. In addition, some quick negotiations at the con resulted in the drafting of Neil Johnson and Arthur Banks from Timebase and Jennifer Adams Kelley from the Federation as crew for the shoot.
A frenzied lunchtime script edit between Sean and Jon resulted in about six pages worth of material from the script being trimmed down, or cut entirely. There just wasn't enough time to film the entire script!
Contending with both busy schedules on the part of the cast and the ever-growing crowd in the hotel bar, the gang launched themselves into filming. The very first bit shot was a brief scene with yet another fan Doctor, Vasilios Alagiannis, who then ran off quickly to join the Whooting Stars game show. From there on out, the cast and crew plowed through the script for four and a half hours, with Steve Hill going to and returning from the Mysterious Theatre 337 presentation. The cast and crew worked amazingly well, in spite of the less than ideal filming location. Anne from the BBCi website noticed us shooting in the dimly-lit bar, and provided us with both some lights and a tripod for the camera, a miniDV camcorder courtesy of Jon.
Along the way, Andrew Beech put his limbs to good use portraying the first Doctor's arm (trust me, it'll make sense when you see the finished video), and Alryssa Kelly lent us a line as Benny Summerfield. Unfortunately, a planned cameo appearance by several Doctor Who novel authors had to be cut for time, with the ending of the sketch being rewritten on the spot. (Ah, the joys of amateur filmmaking.) Despite the last-minute script changes, everyone who worked on this project did a fantastic job, turning in well-crafted performances on an insanely tight schedule.
Click on the images on the right for larger versions.
Photos courtesy of Neil Johnson.
